I am a voracious fan of the old west, yet I come from Wales. The shows are tremendous. Simple yet complete. Imagine having to write a complete episode with between 20 and 30 minutes only. Hardly possible without the great sound effects that literally take us there. It is a pity the radio show ended abruptly. They did play around with Doc moving back east, but he never left, of course. Is anyone with me that we need a few closing episodes? Obviously, hard to do but...l

I've almost completed the project of listening to the entire collection. When I do, I'll start over again. Too bad William Conrad was too big to play Matt on TV. His voice was perfect. It's funny. I hear Conrad and my mind sees Arness.

As the person who uploaded the Gunsmoke shows on this page I'd like to mention that at the time I sent them up way back in the dim past, they were all I had.

Since then others have advanced the cause. I just downloaded the collection mentioned in the last post here: http://www.archive.org/details/OTRR_Certified_Gunsmoke .

I have to tell you...I'm about to replace an earlier version my Gunsmoke Compleat with this one. I was blown away by the extras that come with this download! Job WELL done!

If you're new to Gunsmoke, I envy you. Big time! You are in for a monstrous treat!

Norm

I know I've heard a different rehearsal episode of "Gunsmoke," and I was pretty certain I'd gotten it here. It ended with the announcer, as punchy as the rest of the cast, replacing his usual statement about the show being sent to our boys in uniform with "This show is sent to the troops of our enemies overseas."

Does this version exist anywhere on archive?

"The New Hotel" episode above appears to be either outtakes or an excerpt from a rehearsal of the program.

There's mild swearing, blown lines, laughing in the middle of scenes and odd sound effects.

Funny stuff.

The complete collection of Gunsmoke, 480 shows with 2 auditions shows (June 11, 1949 and July 13, 1949), a 5-hour tribute, and a copy of the pilot television episode (with an opening by John Wayne) is available in Inernet Archive at:

http://www.archive.org/details/OTRR_Certified_Gunsmoke

This collection includes all but six episodes which are not known to exist). The shows are on 11 zipped files that can be downloaded and opened. Note that the first CD contains bonus materials, including the Tribute Show, the first TV episode, all known Australian episodes (the Australian series began in 1955; it's not known how many shows aired or how long the series ran), and other material; some people downloading the shows have complained they didn't know the first CD contained material other than the U.S. old time radio episodes (they could have read the description or simply accepted that there was other material and gone on to download the next disk instead of complaining for all the work that others did).